Today’s “mainstream” media is incapable of telling the truth about anything, ever. It used to be that Western media was biased toward the Left, but now they are the Left, and the most radical faction of the Left.
To pick one example among many, the media are being completely disingenuous about the fight over the debt ceiling. They endlessly repeat the Left’s spin that if we do not raise the debt limit before it is reached, the United States will “default” on its debt. “Default, default, default, default, default” is all one hears from the media. But is there any reality in that assertion?
In a word, no. The debt ceiling is just what you expect: a limit on additional borrowing. It means the government cannot borrow more money. It does not mean the government stops paying interest on the money it has already borrowed.
The obvious analogy is to your personal credit card(s). the bank estimates how much you are financially able to borrow and pay interest on and limits your credit to that amount. When you reach your credit limit, you cannot borrow more money (at least not using that credit card). Reaching your credit limit does not mean that you have repudiated your debt and are not going to pay back interest or principal. It just means you cannot borrow more money.
The same is true of the debt limit on the federal government. Reaching the debt ceiling just means the federal government cannot borrow more money; it does not mean that the the federal government will “default” on the money it has already borrowed, meaning not pay interest on the money and/or not repay the principal on bonds that are maturing.
What the debt ceiling does is force the government to live within its means, meaning to not spend more than it receives in revenue. It is really that simple.
It does force the U.S. Treasury to prioritize its spending, and obviously it does force the government not to do as much discretionary spending as it would like, or as the previous congress wanted.
Even if the debt ceiling is not raised, there is no chance of a “default,” meaning a repudiation of prior debt. The treasury can prioritize its payments and easily have enough to run the government without borrowing more money.
Federal tax receipts in March were $313 billion and interest payments were $67 billion, according to Treasury’s monthly report on revenue and outlays, leaves $246 billion to run the government in March. In April receipts were $639 billion and interest was $62 billion, leaving $577 billion to run the government.
Obviously, there is plenty of money from current income to both service existing debt and to fund essential government services. The scandal is not in failing to raise the debt limit; the real scandal is in the federal government’s chronic, continual failure to live within its means, in either good times or bad times. The scandal is that the federal government thinks it needs to spend many billions more each each month than it takes in.
Congress’s main job, especially in the lower chamber, the House of Representatives, is to hold the purse-strings, to control taxes and spending. But Congress has not passed a budget since 2007; it has been 16 years since Congress did its first and most important job. I will repeat this to let it sink in: it has been 16 years since Congress did its first, most basic, and most important job.
Instead, Congress, year after year after year, votes CRs or “continuing resolutions” to continue to spend money at disastrously reckless levels. Usually, these “laws” are 1,000 pages or more, they are written by lobbyists (Congress hasn’t actually written legislation in about 30 years) and no elected representative ever reads them. You have to vote on the bill before you find out what is in it.
The complete breakdown of the federal budgetary process is a measure of the extreme brokenness of American society. Our ability to govern ourselves through our elected representatives is rapidly receding into the rear-view mirror.
And one of the most important reasons why we can no longer govern ourselves is that we are not given the necessary information to do so. The “mainstream” media has imposed an almost complete embargo on the type of meaningful and important information that an informed citizenry would need in order to make self-government through elected representatives more than theoretical.
The Marxist radicals running the “Biden Administration” have begun to moot the idea that the 14th Amendment empowers the U.S. Treasury to continue to borrow additional money without the consent of the Congress. In pertinent part, this post-Civil War amendment reads:
Section 4.
The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any state shall [pay off Confederate bondholders or pay slave owners an indemnity for the loss of their slaves].
Section 5.
The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
You don’t need to be a lawyer to see what this means: Section 4 states that the United States is required to honor the debts it incurred fighting the Civil War, but may not pay the debts of the Confederacy.
This does not mean that future Congresses, 160 years later, must allow the government to continue to borrow more money and incur new debt, for any and every reason or no reason at all. Moreover, Section 5 empowers the Congress to enforce this provision, not the president, and certainly not the Secretary of the Treasury.
The Congress, not the executive, still controls the federal fisc, taxing and spending. Congress must agree to raise the debt ceiling, or the U.S. Treasury may not borrow more money. It is as simple as that.
This timorous Republican-led House of Representatives is NOT demanding a cut in spending in return for raising the debt limit; spending will continue to grow. The House is demanding only a reduction in the rate of growth. If there were any sanity left in Washington D.C., their demand would be controversial only for being too little, too late.
The Lord will open to you his good treasury, the heavens, to give the rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hands. And you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow. Deut. 28:12
The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender. Prov. 22:7
Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. Rom. 13:8